Have you ever beaten a really tough level, or killed an infuriating boss, and gotten that awesomely satisfying feeling? Maybe it was something in the story itself that made you feel all warm and fuzzy. Or, perhaps it was a bad feeling, like the dread of facing a super tough enemy on your last life. What are some of your favorite video game feels?

For me, after spending weeks on end trying to beat Ornstein and Smough in Dark Souls, when I finally finished them off (and soloing them, no less) I got up and did a little dance that I'm glad there was nobody else around to see.

Discovering Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts 1. At that time I hadn't played any Final Fantasy games, but I still knew about Sephiroth. I knew he was in the game somewhere and was determined to find him. I entered the "?????" Cup, and when he beamed down, slowly got up and turned around to face me, thirteen year old me got freaking chills down his spine-- and then proceeded to have his butt served to him on a silver platter.

In King Kong: The Movie (the game) there's a part where you play as Jack making your way along the bottom of a ravine. There are tons of holes in the walls, and in some of those holes there are giant centipedes that would come out and attack you when you got too close. There was no way to tell which ones they were in, so teenage me was so scared that he ended up wasting all of my ammo shooting into every hole before I got close to it. Probably the only game to ever legitimately scare me. I hated it back then, but these days I wish I could find a game that can scare me the way it did.

1. That prepubescent tingle in my shorts whenever I saw the shop girl in Forgotten Worlds in the arcade.

2. The chilling atmosphere in the last area of Metroid, especially after entering Mother Brain's lair. The sounds and the graphics and the stifling difficulty blew my mind.

3. The reaction in my friend's living room when five of us had been playing Mike Tyson's punch out for two straight days, unable to beat the second Bald Bull, and my friend, in frustration, punched him in the gut during his bull charge. The room exploded with excitement.

4. Playing Aliens in the middle of the night on my Commodore 64, with the rest of my family asleep, and a blanket draped over me and the screen so the light didn't get out.

5. That "You're on the right track" melody and cut scene that played on Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. It always gave me the chills as a kid, and pulled me through the game.

6. Goldeneye and Mario Kart on the N64 each hold dozens of moments during that time of my life. Those two games brought huge numbers of people together in a single living room unlike anything in my life that hasn't involved a family event or holiday. I worked at an electronics shop and we all used to basically leave work and head to my bosses house to play those games, sleep, then wake up in our work clothes and head back to work. Luckily he was single with a huge house.

5. The absolute thrill of being the last guy left on your capture-the-flag team on Battlefield: 1942, and having your dead friends cheer you on over the group chat as they watch you try to survive.

6. The entire experience of Half-life 2, which was mind blowing at the time.

7. The second act of Portal, and that feeling that you have "escaped the Matrix".

8. Realizing what was happening at the end of "Limbo"

9. The Uncharted series was full of moments

10. I've said before that purchasing and opening the original Wii might be the last "Christmas morning" feeling I ever get with a game system, where I feel like I am about to experience something new and magical. Up to that point, a new console with exponentially better, closer to the arcade graphics was what did it for me. I'm hoping the Switch gives me some of that feeling, or the PS VR, but we'll see.

A few Christmas's ago, our city was hit with an ice storm. Power was knocked out for a good part of the city, but our house was fine. This meant my parents and brother had to spend a few days at our place while waiting for their power to be restored. This meant they stayed from xmas eve to about the 28th of December.

Anyway, that Christmas my wife bought me a Wii U, and so that Christmas my brother (and my 2 kids) went to the basement, set it up and played New Super Mario U for hours. My brother is 49, I'm 42. This was the first christmas morning we (me, brother, and our parents) spent together in about 25 years. We are always together during the holidays, but since moving out of our parents in our late teens, early 20s, we haven't done the christmas morning thing since living with our parents. This brought back great memories of us getting the Genesis for xmas, SNES, etc. It was really quite weird (and nice) that here we are, middle aged men, playing a brand new console on Christmas morning with my kids.

DaHeckIzDat wrote:Have you ever beaten a really tough level, or killed an infuriating boss, and gotten that awesomely satisfying feeling?

This year I beat the original Adventure Island. That was a euphoric victory.

It isn't as renowned for difficulty as other tough games such as Battletoads, but it should be. Some of those later levels are hilariously unforgiving if you lose your weapon. I spent hours just trying to get past 8-2. Good luck ever beating this thing without the Hudson bee. It was a huge relief when it was finally over.

Having played games since around 1994, I've had a few. The first time I played Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage were certified AWESOME moments. The first time I played Bioshock, I was captivated and couldn't look back. Also, the first time I played Quake II for PC. More recently, the first time I played DOOM 4 a year ago. That's definitely the best game to come out in a long long time for me.

wolfdragon89 wrote:Having played games since around 1994, I've had a few. The first time I played Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage were certified AWESOME moments. The first time I played Bioshock, I was captivated and couldn't look back. Also, the first time I played Quake II for PC. More recently, the first time I played DOOM 4 a year ago. That's definitely the best game to come out in a long long time for me.

Yep. Playing Sonic after being used to NES graphics was an amazing leap. Same with experiencing Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventure for on the Dreamcast back in the day.

The first time I sat in the cockpit of Star Wars, the 1983 arcade game. Everything just clicked on my first play.

This was a time when you went to a dark arcade with some friends and a pocketful of quarters or tokens. I had less of a pocketful than others, so I wanted to find a game that I could get some good game time on. The arcade had games like Ms Pac Man, Zaxxon, Qbert, Joust, Tron, and others. I walked to this dark cockpit with a buddy - its designed with a window in the back so others can watch - and started my first run on the Death Star. The Force was with me, and I made that one in a million shot and watched it explode. The bright crisp graphics, the digitized voices, and of course getting to be Red 5 (and sometimes Porkins) was incredible.

It was awesome. In retrospect, I think it clicked because I was good at an earlier game called Tail Gunner. The controls were different, but there was enough the same where the brain probably made the adjustment easily for the tie fighter approach segment. The tower segment is a breeze, and the trench is usually what seperates the pilots from the peasants.